Echo
by aemelia113
Summary: What if the Winchesters had a half sibling besides Adam The Forgotten? Meet Echo Winchester, long lost sister. The brothers find her by accident skillfully defending her town from supernatural trouble, but she claims not to be a hunter, just a girl with a job to do and a town to protect. What starts out as a convenient alliance becomes an epic family team-up. Winchesters unite!
1. Prologue

Author's Note: Characters' swearing may be OOC because I only type baby curse words. Set sometime after the apocalypse has been stopped (Season 5) and Sam is back, but contains no info on the angels, Dean's break from hunting, or what the heck happened to Sam because I have seen none of Season 6. As always, please tell me if my OC starts to go Mary Sue. I don't want to be _that_ writer. Thanks a bunch for reading!

Prologue: Safe

I hunched further into my leather jacket as the wind intensified, roaring over the lonely field outside of town where I had agreed to meet my father. I stood under the area's solitary scraggly tree, hoping it would provide a little shelter from the wind as well as a landmark for John to find me by. I needn't have worried. I was lost in thought wondering what he could possibly have to tell me that was so important I needed to break my promise to Mom never to see him again. He had sounded so urgent on the phone that I had relented and agreed to come. In all the time he had known I existed, we had asked very little of each other, so I knew that for him to come as close to begging as he ever did, it had to be pretty dang serious. I turned from my watch of the lonely dirt road I had ridden to get here to find John's face no more than 3 feet from mine, if that. I jumped with a startled yelp, and then scowled at myself for letting him sneak up and scare me like that.

He, too, looked on with disapproval. "You should be more careful. If I had been a bad guy, you would never have seen me coming. Good instincts on grabbing your weapon, though a little bit late to be a lot of help," He commented.

Always criticizing my survival skills. Despite how much I didn't want to be, I was a little hurt. I was still craving the approval of an absent father after all this time. I didn't even understand why he was always so concerned that I know how to defend myself. This wasn't exactly a crime-ridden town or anything. Did he really expect me to ever need to know how to block an underhanded stab maneuver? I almost rolled my eyes. Instead, I scowled harder and hit him where I knew it would hurt most.

"According to Mom, at least, you _are_ a bad guy," I snapped.

I regretted it when his face fell for a moment. He was back to his normal stony neutral expression in a second, but all the same it unnerved me. Normally he would have covered up with a frown and a snide remark. So whatever he came for was _really_ serious, then. Alright, then. No time to be stubborn and harsh. It was time to listen, so I mumbled an apology and motioned for him to say whatever he'd come here to say. I was nervous, impatient, and colder than the iceberg that took down the Titanic, so I wasn't particularly inclined to wait out here for very long for him to get on with it.

He took in a shuddering breath, then blew it out, pulling at his stubbly beard I used to rub my tiny hands over when he visited. Then he proceeded to tell me something I wished to God I could unhear.

"Every evil thing that you have ever heard stories about, especially the ones in my stories, is real," he said.

"What?" my reply was a choked, panicked whisper.

"Werewolves, vampires, ghosts… demons… all the monsters from my stories are real, and demon activity is up an insane amount. They're working on something big, and I think it involves me and my family. I hope to God that it doesn't include you, but in case it does, you need to know how to protect yourself and your mother. I don't have a lot of time before everything goes down, but I had to make time to make sure you would be okay," John explained.

"You're not making sense," I said. "You're scaring me."

"I'm making perfect sense, and you know it. And you're right to be scared. This crap _is_ scary. It scares me and I've been killing supernatural creeps for over two decades. Point is, I'm sorry to have to dump all this on you. If I had my way, you'd never have to know about the things that go bump in the night, let alone feel responsible for stopping them, but I want you to know how to be safe," John insisted.

I was quiet for a minute, thinking, remembering. "Does this mean that the dream I had when I was little where you saved a lady from a vampire in an alley was real?" I asked. It had always troubled me that it had seemed more like a memory than a dream that my father had chopped a dude's head off on the way home from taking me to Baskin Robbins.

"Yes," he said simply. "That was real. I told you that you had fallen asleep in my arms on the walk home and had dreamed it because I was trying to protect you."

"Protect me? From what?" I asked him.

"From knowing the terrible truth about monsters: that they are real and can absolutely hurt you," John explained, sugarcoating nothing as usual. "But I have some things for you," he said as he extended a durable looking old army pack in my direction.

I took it from him and examined the contents. There were weapons of all kinds, guns and knives and ammunition made of a few different kinds of metals. There was a canister of salt and a bottle of lighter fluid, a small collapsible shovel, and a couple of books. I removed the smaller of the two and looked at the cover. It was simple blue leather with a strange symbol on the cover, a weird circle with a star in the middle and little squiggles in the empty spaces. I opened the book to find line after line of John's neat, cramped handwriting, along with a few careful drawings and diagrams. I looked closer and saw that there were sections, each with the heading proclaiming a different monster with subheadings describing different aspects of the beast: how it looked, what it ate, signs that gave away that it was them killing people, how to spot it in disguise, and most thoroughly: how to trap and kill it. I looked up at John.

"It's far from a complete encyclopedia of every monster out there, but it's darn close to every one I've encountered and beaten. I put together a sort of guide for you, tried to cover all the bases, but the thing you'll probably need to know the most about is demons. I put them at the front. They're the ones behind a lot of the supernatural activity out there. If you see something you don't recognize from the guide, then be careful looking it up. Not only is it hard to separate credible lore from cheap entertainment, but you could attract the wrong kind of attention," John said. "On that topic, I am absolutely not encouraging you to go out looking for trouble. By no means am I asking you to be a hunter. That's no kind of life for a bright girl like you. I tried to get my younger son to stay away from all this nonsense at Stanford. He was real smart, too. Was gonna be a lawyer. But he got dragged back into the life. I don't want that for you. I don't."

"Because I'm a girl? Or because I'm not your real, legitimate kid? Am I not good enough to fight what's out there in the dark?" I practically yelled. Since when was he so dang concerned for my freaking safety? He's the one who taught me how to fight like a boxer in a bar brawl when I was ten.

"No," he barked, a little harshly. I was tempted to lean back when he reached for me, but I held my ground as he placed his hands on my shoulders, his head bowed. "I don't want that for you because you have a chance to live peacefully the way my sons didn't. A demon killed their mother and I dragged them with me on the road, so lost in my grief that I didn't notice that I was pulling them down a path they could never turn back from, full of violence and death and lies and unimaginable horror… and loss. Not until it was too late. You're smart and you didn't grow up killing things that look for all the world like other people, like your friends, neighbors, lovers. You don't have to be what I've been for too long now. This life, it makes you tired, so tired. I think it was because you didn't grow up with me around that you turned out as well as you did. I wish I didn't have to burden you with this, but I want you to be _safe_ in case I can't be the one to save you."

He took his hands off my shoulders and reached into the side pocket of the army pack and pulled out a necklace. He held it out to me. I took it from him and examined it. It was a dull metal pendant on a simple silver chain, the pendant shaped like another weird symbol. It was a star inside a circle that had wavy lines coming out from it like the rays of the sun. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"It's made of pure silver and iron. The symbol wards off demonic possession. It's not as effective as getting it tattooed on, but it's the best I could do for you. Put it on and never take it off. You understand me? Not to shower, not to work out, not to sleep. Never. Take. It. Off. Promise me, Echo," he insisted.

Like I said, we'd never asked much of each other before. I was still pretty uncertain if I believed all of this 'demons are real' craziness. I was still confused about why my mom had banned him from seeing me ever again. I was more than a little terrified and overwhelmed. But I was still a Winchester, so I sucked it up. My father was pleading with me. This was beyond important to him, so it didn't matter if I didn't understand a word of it. I'd wear the necklace, keep it on at all times, and read the book. When I made a promise, I kept it, so when I said, "I promise," I meant it.

I put the necklace on and locked the clasp in place. John nodded in approval. Then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead at the hairline like he'd done when I was little.

"Happy 17th birthday, Echo. Be good. Be safe. Love you," my father said.

"I will. Love you, too," I replied.

That was the last thing I ever said to him.

He turned and walked away in the opposite direction of the road I'd come in on, and I stood there under the scraggly tree until I heard the sound of an engine, then I turned away and walked back to my bike. Mom didn't approve of the motorcycle, but I had bought and insured it with my own money, so there wasn't a lot she could do. I didn't fight her on much, but I fought for Bluebird with ferocity. I had been in love since I saw her on the lot, sky blue paint job, gray leather saddlebags, and a sticker for The Clash that refused to come off the exhaust pipe. She wasn't much, but she was mine. I kicked her into gear and rode into the night with the army pack slung over my back full of weapons and my mind full of questions without answers.

It would be a while before I really believed John about the demons, but I read the book faithfully, kept the pack with me at all times that I could manage it, and practiced my moves pretty much every day. I never took that darn necklace off once, either. It would take nearly five years for anything supernatural to roll into my town, but when it did, I was ready.

Sort of.

-End Prologue-


	2. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Since I am not up-to-date on SPN and it's taken me awhile just to get to Season 6, I might make some canonical errors, whether on purpose to fit the storyline or accidentally. If you see something that bugs you, just let me know and I'll either explain it or fix it. Thanks, my beautiful readers!

Chapter 1: Wherein the Winchesters Have an Unnoticed Family Reunion

Dean scowled at the newspaper in front of him. "This is crap. Barely anything here. Why the heck would Missouri send us here to some podunk town in Virginia?"

Sam sighed and said, without lifting his head from the computer screen, "I don't know, Dean, but it looks like it could be our kind of case. Missouri hasn't called us in ages. It has to be _something,_ right?"

"Sure, whatever," Dean grumbled, going back to scanning the meager article.

A few reports of people acting out of the ordinary, a couple of "mysterious" attacks, but no sulfur, no omens, and most importantly, no actual murder. If it was ghosts or demons, it sure as heck wouldn't be this low-key. Not that he expected Missouri to be wrong, but whatever this was didn't look serious enough to warrant the urgency in her phone message. The research made things add up to looking like a waste of their time.

"Hey, maybe the thing hasn't really gotten started yet. Could be that it's going to _get_ bad, but it hasn't yet," Sam reasoned.

"Yeah, maybe," Dean mumbled, still disappointed at the pathetic excuse for a job. "I wish her message had been a little clearer, though. Or that they could have gotten ahold of her to ask follow-up questions, but so far they hadn't been able to reach the psychic. "What do you think she meant by 'you'll find a surprising ally,' Sammy?"

"I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I'd bet she means there's gonna be a person that's on our team, or at the very least willing to help us with the problem. Though the 'surprising' part worries me a little bit," Sam replied.

"Me, too," Dean agreed.

The brothers went back to research. In the morning, they packed up the usual supplies and headed into town in the Impala.

All was well until they were passing the post office. Screams split the air and a uniformed postal worker crashed through the window of the establishment and rolled to a stop in the street. A car swerved to avoid him and the Winchesters were forced to swerve to avoid being hit by the other vehicle. They shoved Baby into park and jumped out, rushing towards the man in the street, hands hovering above the pockets that held their weapons.

As it turned out, they were not strictly necessary to handle the situation. Actually, they even got their butts kicked just a little. Two people, a woman and a teenage boy, climbed through the shattered window and stalked toward the man on the ground, faces full of malice. Dean drew his silver knife and swiped it across the face of the woman, but it barely grazed her. In fact, she looked more annoyed than hurt and kicked him in the side hard enough to send him skidding back a couple of yards. When he saw the woman's nose start dripping black goo, he swore under his breath. Ghost possession. That must be why silver wasn't doing anything. He shouted to Sammy to use iron, but too late because his brother bowled into him as he was getting to his feet, knocking them both over to the tune of more cursing. Suddenly they heard a whistle from across the street. They untangled themselves to see that the two possessed people had stopped in the act of advancing on them to turn in the direction of the noise.

Standing in between the unconscious postal worker and the people who had apparently thrown him through a window was a girl, likely in her late teens, clad in combat boots, cargo pants, and a band t-shirt with a sword across her back and a spray bottle of all things in her hand. She was in a fighting stance and had a smirk on her pretty young face graced by a smattering of freckles. Her green eyes sparkled with amusement and she tossed her short chocolate brown hair defiantly. She shot a wink at the brothers, still on the ground, and addressed the creeps.

"You want this guy on the ground, right?" she asked, gesturing at the prone form of the man. "Not those two dorks on the ground. If you want Mr. Mullins, you'll have to go through me. So what are you waiting for? Bring it on, weirdos!" she challenged them.

They ran at her, faster than they should be able to, and Dean struggled to his feet against the pain in his ribs and tried to get to the other side of the street, fearing for the girl. He needn't have worried. At the last second, she sprayed the people in the face with the contents of the bottle she was holding and they jerked back, hissing in pain. The girl was quick to punch the woman in the face on the spot that Dean had cut her and she screamed as the wound started smoking. The girl turned and roundhouse kicked the recovering boy, knocking him into the woman. Taking advantage of their distraction, she sprayed them heavily with the water bottle again, eliciting more hissing. She had been maneuvering the fight into the alley next to the post office, away from the bystanders. With an elbow to the woman's nose and a shove to the boy's chest, she successfully moved them into the alley. If Sam and Dean hadn't recovered from the hits and the surprise and followed her into the alley, they never would have seen her whip out two iron rods and press them into the temples of the people until the ghosts were driven out. She took a moment to examine their appearances- old, homemade clothes with burn marks and cross necklaces—before swiping the rods through the spirits. Her head turned slightly in their direction and before they could say anything she turned around and had the ends of the rods pressed against their throats and their backs to the wall. The brothers stilled.

"Any particular reason you followed me into this alley?" she drawled, lessening the pressure on their throats enough for them to speak.

"We just wanted to make sure you were okay," Dean answered honestly.

She snorted, but put the rods back in the right side pocket of her pants and stepped back. "As you can see, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. As well as the two of you, apparently," she said with a smirk.

"No kidding," said Sam. "Where'd you learn to fight like that anyway?"

"My dad taught me," she answered, a little stiffly.

"Are the people on the ground okay? Why do you think they attacked that guy?" Dean asked carefully.

"The people on the ground are fine, just a little roughed up. And you know perfectly well why they attacked that guy," she said impatiently. "I heard you tell Sasquatch here to use iron, which is the usual remedy for ghosts. _You_ two are hunters." She flashed them a cocky smirk.

Sam replied, "You got us. Yeah, we're hunters. So are you, apparently. Surprise meetings don't really happen all that often since it's a relatively small club."

The girl frowned at Sam. "Actually, no. I don't go out looking for trouble. If there's a problem, I'll deal with it, but I'm not eager to bring down voodoo-style vengeance on my head like a tidal wave of suck. This is the first time I've ever had to do anything, and I would love to talk shop sometime, but I need to know something first," she began.

"What?" both brothers asked at once.

"Are those things gonna come back and possess these two in a minute? Because I haven't had time to do anything about the graves yet and I don't want them to go after Mr. Mullins again. Or anyone else," she explained.

"No, I think we're good for a while. The iron and whatever the heck you've got in that spray bottle did a number on them. It'll probably take a few hours for the ghosts to regroup, even ones strong enough to possess people," Dean said. "That might be enough time to find out who they are and how to gank them for good."

The girl nodded sharply and got ready to say something else when one of the shapes on the ground stirred, prompting her to mutter angrily to herself, "Rookie mistake. Never leave the bad guys or the bad guys' rides unattended and unrestrained on the ground. Stupid."

She pulled zip ties from another pocket of her cargo pants and secured the hands and feet of the formerly possessed people. Just then, a man appeared at the end of the alley. Sam and Dean made to redraw their weapons, but the girl waved them off.

"These two botherin' you, Miss Echo?" the man asked gruffly.

Now that he was moving further into the alley and not blocking the light, the brothers could see what the girl had already noticed: he was wearing a local police uniform, armed with a gun, Taser, club, mace, and a walrus-like mustache. He moved carefully and deliberately into the narrow space, subtly moving between them and the girl. Sam and Dean removed their hands from their pockets as subtly as possible and awaited the stranger's answer, not sure what she would say.

"No, Sheriff. These gentlemen just saw me move the fight off the street and wanted to see if I was alright. I'm fine, and the perps are restrained. They seem like okay dudes," the girl, Echo, responded calmly.

The sheriff nodded in acceptance of her appraisal of the two men. "If you say so, Echo. I appreciate you keepin' them crazies away from poor Mr. Mullins, but you know I prefer for you to leave the fightin' and the handcuffin' to my boys, right?" he asked.

Echo rolled her eyes, but softened it with a smile. "I've been winning local featherweight boxing bouts against people twice my size since I was eleven, Sheriff. _You_ know I can handle myself, right?" she reminded him.

He sighed, "I s'pose you're right, like usual. Stay safe though, 'kay?"

She saluted with accurate army posture and barked, "Sir, yes sir," in a teasing tone.

The lawman shook his head at the odd girl. "What will I ever do with you, child?" he chuckled.

"Guess the only thing _to_ do is to keep letting me punch criminals until the lovely officers get to the scene 'cause I always beat you there," she replied.

Two such officers arrived in that moment to retrieve the mostly unconscious forms of the two people, who mumbled their confusion and innocence on the way to the squad car. Proper handcuffs were slapped on and the suspects were closed into the backseat with a thump of finality. Echo finished talking to the sheriff and motioned for them to follow her, but the man stopped them and spoke low in their faces.

"You listen here. I know you're from out of town and I don't like the looks of you personally, but that girl has some of the finest intuition this side of the Mississippi. If she hadn't vouched for you, I'd have hauled your butts to the station for questioning. Give me one reason to think you'd lay a hand on her, and I'll do worse than that, you hear?" The boys nodded. "Good." Then the sheriff turned on his heel and left them to exit the alley after him to an impatient Echo tapping her foot from her position next to Baby across the street. They crossed and joined her.

"So, you're local. That much is obvious," Dean opened up the conversation.

"What gave it away? Knowing the mailman by name or the sheriff knowing mine?" she snarked.

"Little of both. Speaking of names, I'm Sam and this is my brother Dean," Sam replied.

Dean shot him a look of disapproval mixed with betrayal. Introductions were supposed to go the other way around. Sam shrugged apologetically. He never got to go first. It was only fair.

"As you might have heard, my name's Echo. It's actually a nickname. The real one is too embarrassing to mention, but it starts with E and my dad couldn't pronounce it without grimacing, so he used the letter E according to the military alphabet. Ex-marine or something. I don't even answer to the other one anymore. Half the time, I forget to put it down on paperwork and junk," she said with the rehearsed air of someone who has been asked the same question a hundred times or more in their lifetime.

"Okay, Echo," Dean began. "Explain to us a little better what you mean by you not being a real hunter."

She leaned casually against Baby and Dean had to bite his tongue to keep from saying anything that might spook the kid, but something must have shown on his face because she looked him over for a moment before taking a step away from the Impala.

"Well, I don't go out and hunt things. I don't travel the country keeping an eye out for omens of stuff to kill. I just know how to deal with supernatural… issues… so I can keep my town, my mom, and myself safe," Echo told them.

"But you're really good at this stuff," Dean said sincerely. "Not many people are cut out for it, but from what I've seen, you've got what it takes to gank the evil creeps that lurk in the dark. Why not pursue something you're good at?"

Her face darkened momentarily, then her expression cleared. "Because I made a promise not to. One I intend to keep. As soon as this problem is dealt with, I'm done until and unless something comes after my people again," she said with a seriousness that betrayed a lot more wisdom and a lot more sorrow than anybody so young ought to have. "I take care of my own and that's it," she affirmed.

The brothers exchanged a look, then nodded at the girl in front of them. Dean spoke up. "I can understand that. Is it your dad you made the promise to? The one who taught you how to fight?" he asked.

"Not that it's any of your business, but I've got no one else to talk to about hunter stuff, so, yeah. Dad showed up randomly on my seventeenth birthday a few years ago and told me monsters were real and they were out to get him, and maybe the people he cared about. He handed me a bag full of weapons and a book he put together for me that's kind of like the D&D monster manual. It's full of information on different creatures, including how to spot and kill it and how to defend yourself from it. He said he didn't want the hunter life for me, but he didn't want me to be in the dark about how to protect myself and my mom if the need arose," Echo explained. She paused for a second to pull out a chain from underneath her shirt and hold the pendant up to the light. "Recognize this?" she inquired.

Sam looked at it. "It's an anti-possession charm," he murmured. "Is it made of iron _and_ silver?"

"Yep. Never know when you'll need either," she said. "He made me promise to never take it off and to never go looking for trouble. Did whoever got you two into hunting so young give you anything like that?"

Dean opened his collar and showed her the tattoo. A small, fond smile crossed her lips for a second, caused by some unknown memory.

"Sasquatch over here has one, too. But they were the idea of the guy who might as well have been our dad, not our actual dad, who got us into this mess," he said.

"Brothers, then?" Nods from the Winchester boys. "What about that?" she asked, pointing at the amulet around his neck.

He picked it up from his collarbone and rubbed it absentmindedly. "This? Nah. It doesn't do anything. Just has some sentimental value, that's all," he said dismissively.

"Okay," she said, clapping her hands together once. "Backstory time over, unless you'd like to share anything more… No? Thought not. Anyway, down to business. What do you say we discuss how to get a handle on this problem somewhere… more private?"

At this, she gestured with her head in the direction of the damaged post office. The brothers hadn't noticed that the crowd of people who had witnessed the fight being released from police questions drifting closer to them. Trying to listen in, no doubt. So, they agreed that it might be a good time for a change of scenery. Echo grinned.

"Great! My bike is just up the street. Give me two minutes, then pull into traffic, and head thataway," she said, pointing in the direction they'd been heading in prior to all the commotion. "Look for the stone cold fox on the sweet ride the color of the sky and follow me to the absolute _best_ diner anywhere. They have an unbearably delicious berry pie."

With that, she walked off, leaving Dean wondering how his patience would hold up having to go slowly enough to follow a motherfreakin' bicycle who knew how far down the road. He got into the Impala with a scowl already on his face, having decided the answer to his internal question was "not well" despite how much he was charmed by this odd young girl. He started up Baby as Sam clambered into the passenger side and pulled into the road. They were moving at a snail's pace up the street when suddenly they heard the roar of a two-cylinder engine and saw a bright blue motorcycle streak into the street ahead of them, perform a spinning wheelie, then proceed down the road _very_ quickly. Dean and Sam grinned like idiots when they realized they'd been wrong about what kind of bike Echo had meant. Dean put the pedal to the floor to catch up to her and all three Winchesters vroomed towards the allegedly "unbearably delicious" berry pie.

Oh, and a plan for dealing with the possession ghosts, obviously. They hadn't forgotten about that. Or, at least, they hadn't forgotten for very long. About the length of one car ride across a pretty small town to one of its four restaurants, in fact.

-End Chapter 1-


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Let's Get Down to Business

The 'chase' ended in front of a nondescript 50's style diner. There was absolutely no deviation from the black-white-red checkered milkshake bar theme that was so popular in that decade. It was a brick and tile cliche, but the brothers had eaten in worse places. All parties disembarked their vehicles, Echo removing her helmet that matched the blue of her motorcycle and shaking her hair. Everybody secured their respective rides and the Winchester boys followed Echo into the cool interior of the diner, apparently called Rae's. Echo walked in and greeted the waiter at the bar by name, waving.

"Hey, Ross," she called. "We'll be in my usual booth, and the tourists here are gonna need some menus. It's also probably a safe bet that a pot of strong coffee is gonna be necessary."

Ross nodded at her and grabbed the menus from behind the counter, handing them to the Winchester boys as they slid in across from Echo. He walked back off into the kitchen and by the time he came back with a pot of coffee and three mugs, the trio was ready to order. Sam asked for an egg white omelette and fresh fruit, Dean requested the Mighty Meaty breakfast with home fries, and Echo just told Ross to bring out her usual. The brothers sipped coffee with odd synchronicity as they wondered for just a moment what it would have been like to have lived in one place long enough to have a usual diner, a usual booth, a usual special, where you knew the mailman and the sheriff and the short order cook by name. For a brief moment, they envied Echo slightly. Sitting across from them, she somehow managed to give them a sideways glance.

"I know what you're thinking, and living in the Mayberry of small towns your whole life isn't the apple pie white picket fence paradise two people who've lived on the road and on the run practically their whole lives (from what I can tell) might think it would be. Don't get me wrong, I realize how good I've got it compared to crappy motel rooms and getting nearly killed all the time, but I've never been anywhere but here, never seen one dang thing that wasn't within an hour's drive of the place I was born. In all likelihood, this is the place I'll die someday having never made a lick of difference to anybody. Probably marry a farmer's son and become a farmer's wife and maybe push out a couple of kids. Not a bad life, but unremarkable all the same, so keep your pieholes shut about how lucky I am or how unlucky you are as much as possible, capisce?" Echo finished with a raised eyebrow.

The brothers exchanged a glance, more than a little bit unnerved by how well she'd guessed their thoughts, and maybe a bit ashamed of how often they brooded over what they could have had, now that they thought about it. They did have each other, and they'd saved a lot of lives, despite their mistakes and the people they didn't get to in time. Most of the time, their life was a river of crap, but it admittedly had its moments, when a changeling horde caught fire in time to save the kids, when an angel did the right thing, when a demon was silenced forever. Yeah, life sucked a lot, but sometimes, just sometimes, it was pretty good. It was time to change the subject and break the awkward silence, as the girl was looking at them expectantly. They nodded.

Sam asked, "What are you, a mind reader?"

Echo shrugged. "Not as far as I know. I'm just really good at reading people, like when you wanted me to not lean on your car," she said. "I can just tell by little tics in your posture and your voice how you're feeling. Or stuff about your background."

"Like what?" Dean asked apprehensively.

"Like you two are from somewhere in the Midwest and Sasquatch got a college education, but you both went to high school, and you both have some kind of beef with your father. If I had to hazard a guess, because he put hunting before his kids as a priority sometimes," Echo said.

"How do you know all that?" Sam asked, hand drifting unconsciously for his cannister of holy water.

"I'm not a demon, if that's what you're implying. And neither are either of you. I slipped holy water in the coffee when you were looking at the menus. The accents gave me the location, the vocabulary and the way you talk gave me education, and the way you spoke about your not-dad who gave you the tattoos versus your real dad gave me the Daddy Issues..." she replied, trailing off. She smiled sadly during the pause, the continued softly, "And I knew the reason you're mad at your father because hunter dads are all pretty similar with their kids, at least in my experience." She looked at them meaningfully.

Sam's hand moved away from the holy water as he realized a lot of her intuition about hunters' kids came from the experience of being one, not from supernatural sources. Dean, for one, was a little more relaxed and a lot more concerned for this girl than he had been during the fight. Was it right to bring her into this? It might start out as this one case, sure, but who knew if she'd be able to keep that promise to her dad once she realized she could make a difference instead of living the quiet, unremarkable, safe life she'd described to them. She really was very talented at this business. The thing with the holy water was very impressive. He'd never even seen her move.

"How did you sneak Jesus Juice into our mugs without us noticing?" Dean asked her.

"Easy," she replied, some of her vibrancy and smugness coming back. "I put it into the pot while Ross was holding it. Unlike you, he isn't conditioned to notice the slightest change in weight to what he's holding, like say the weight of one vial of holy water. I didn't have to touch your mugs. You poured the demon tester in your own cups."

"Clever," Sam said, reluctantly impressed. "Speaking of holy water, it doesn't affect ghosts, so what the heck did you have in that spray bottle?"

"Holy salt water," she answered nonchalantly. "Affects ghosts and double affects demons, in convenient weaponized form. One of my better ideas, actually."

"What do you mean _one_ of?" Dean asked.

She snorted out a laugh. "I guess it's my fault for telling you I wanted to talk shop. Then again, I love to brag and like I said, people around here aren't exactly a good audience for my best ideas about how to kill supernatural phenomena. So—"

Just then, the food arrived. The three dug in, and the brothers had to admit it was decent food, better than decent, actually. It turned out that Echo's 'usual' for breakfast was chocolate chip waffles and sausage links. This seemed to reinforce Dean's perception of her as a kid, because she picked up on it and glared at him.

"Shut up," she muttered around a mouthful of waffle. "I'm twenty-two. I can eat whatever I dang well please for breakfast as long as I can afford it. I can legally purchase alcohol and can probably drink both of you under the table with one hand tied behind my back, so don't say a freaking thing about my waffles or I swear to God I will break your nose."

To punctuate her point, she shoved another forkful of waffles into her mouth and chewed slowly, all the while maintaining eye contact. Dean broke first, wanting to give her the victory, and smiled down at the table before shoveling in his own food. The three ate silently until they were almost finished, and surprisingly, maybe impressively, Echo cleaned her plate before Dean did, even with the same amount of food to start with. She didn't notice, or chose to ignore, Sam's disbelieving stare as she set down her fork and wiped her mouth.

"So, game plan?" she asked. "How do we find out who the ghosts are, what they want, and where they're buried so we can take care of this problem once and for all, before anybody in my town actually gets killed?"

Dean finished with his food and took a swig from his nearly empty coffee mug before replying, "Well, the who has got to come before the why or the where, so I suggest we go by the clothes they were wearing and any connection between the victims to figure out names. We'll probably need to look at the town records, probably from awhile back based on the clothes, unless they were reenactment geeks. Where would old newspapers and censuses be kept? City hall?"

"Actually, everything about town history is in the library," Echo answered.

"Great, we'll have to wait till dark and break in or else sneak past security to get to the periodicals section," Sam muttered, done as well.

"Guys, actually—," Echo began.

"It's not exactly the library of Congress, Dean, but it'll still have alarm systems. We wouldn't have enough time to find and grab what we need before the police come," Sam pointed out.

"Guys, hello?" Echo tried again.

"Echo knows this town. She could probably tell us where to find what we need so we could grab it and get out fast," Dean protested.

"Guys," Echo spoke louder.

"I doubt she has the library floor plan memorized, Dean," Sam shot back.

Echo whistled sharply, and the boys, as well as the light crowd in the diner, turned to look. She waved the gawkers off apologetically and they slowly turned away again and resumed their meals.

"I do, actually, seeing as I work at the library," Echo interjected, now that she had their attention. "But breaking in will not be necessary because, being local, as well as a library employee, I happen to have a library card that will get us into the periodicals room and let us check out most of the books in the library." She smirked at their embarrassed faces. "Perks of teaming up with a local girl."

Dean rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Guess we got ahead of ourselves, huh?"

"Just a little. No need to resort to anything illegal just yet. Now, I know I promised you guys the best pie ever, but seeing as it's not even noon, how about we hold off until after research and supper, 'kay?" Echo inquired.

The brothers agreed. Plates were cleared, bills were paid. Dean insisted on picking up the check because she'd saved their butts before, and she didn't protest. The party left the restaurant and Echo led the way once again on her blue motorcycle, though with less showing off this time. The Impala trailed behind Bluebird all the way to the town library.

Just as Echo had promised, they got in without any trouble. She greeted the librarian by name as they passed the desk, and then led them to the periodical room.

"What exactly are we looking for?" she asked.

"Any records of deaths of members of religious groups from a time when they would have made their own clothing, so 17 or 18 hundreds maybe?" Sam guessed. "They were wearing cross necklaces, anyway."

Dean shrugged. "It's as good a place as any to start," he said.

So, the three spent the next five hours combing through obituaries and church newsletters and death certificates, with no real results.

"What about this one?" Echo asked for the fourth different time in the past hour and a half. "The two members of First Presbyterian who died were mother and son, and the two ghosts looked related."

Sam shook his head. "It says here they were cremated, and they died of influenza, not violently."

"They could be coming back through a scrap of DNA or a favorite object, and ghosts aren't always made from people who die bloody," Dean defended her guess, even though he shared Sam's doubt, because they had to cover their bases, not because she was starting to grow on him. Not at all, he denied the truth.

"The attacks all happened in different places, so it's not likely to be something like a haunted object, for one," Sam explained. "And even though there are exceptions, ghosts are almost always people who died violently, and the ghosts had bloodstains on their sleeves."

"Excuse me, Sherlock Holmes, for not noticing that obvious detail in the twelve seconds they were materialized," Dean snapped. It had been a long day with nothing to show for it.

"Hey, calm down, you two," Echo interrupted. "It's been slow going and we haven't found a lot, but we don't have a lot to go on. So if you two doofuses could just take a breather and—"

She was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing.

"Crap, I forgot I left this on," she muttered. She checked the display. "It's my mom. I've got to take this."

She walked out of the room, but stopped in the hallway. She swiped to answer and the brothers, who were pretending not to listen, could just about make out Echo's side of the conversation.

"Hi, Mom," Echo began. "What's up?...Really? When?... Oh, God. Is Tess… Good. Okay. You alright? Then, I'll be there in ten. Love you. Oh, and I'm going to be out tonight with—friends. Yeah, I can get dinner for myself. See you tomorrow. Bye."

Echo walked back into the room, face tight with worry. Both of the brothers were concerned about whatever the topic of that phone call could have been if it made the seemingly unflappable girl more afraid than she'd been facing down possessed people.

"What's wrong?" Dean asked.

Echo talked as she packed up her purse and cleared the area where she'd been working. "There was another attack. At the elementary school."

"Darn, I didn't think they could reform that fast. Is anybody hurt or...?" Sam asked haltingly, not wanting to use the K word when talking about small children.

"All the kids are fine, but one of the teachers was hurt pretty bad. Mrs. Gillespie. God, I can't believe anybody would hurt her. She's a sweet old lady. She taught me when I was in fifth grade," she said.

"Supernatural stuff doesn't give a crap about age, or anything else but their own interests," Dean pointed out, not unsympathetically. "It's too bad it was somebody you know, though. That always sucks lemons."

"Heh. Sounds like a couple of my ex-boyfriends. But I'm just glad the kids are alright. I need to go over and check on this one girl, but you guys can keep looking here if you want. I can lend you my library card in case you need to check something out," she explained as she finished packing up. "To save you time, none of the books I was going through before looked like anything but a dead end."

"We'd actually like to come with you, if that's okay. We get some of our better info from talking to people face to face. We may be paying your teacher a visit in the hospital later to see if we can't make a connection between the victims," Sam requested.

"Not to burst your bubble, but how do you plan to sneak past armed police officers into the hospital room of a woman who was recently assaulted? Not that I'm not flattered if you think I can persuade them to let us through, but they don't like me quite that much, apart from the sheriff. Think I stick my nose where it doesn't belong," she admitted.

Dean pulled out his fake FBI badge and handed it to her. She flipped it open and frowned at it for a minute before handing it back. She looked at the brothers a little differently than before, then nodded like she had just confirmed something.

"What?" he asked.

She let off a chuckle seeing his face. "It's just that some things my dad taught me how to do suddenly make more sense. You use those fake credentials a lot?"

Nods.

"Credit card fraud? Hotwiring a car? Pickpocketing? Hustling poker? Lockpicking?" she rattled off.

More nods, with more hesitation than before.

"Okay, well my dad taught me to do those things too. I had no idea why, but I guess he hadn't made up his mind about me not being in the hunting life at that point and thought they'd be good skills for me to have, like being able to shoot a gun with accuracy from 15 yards. Go figure. I guess hunting dads give their kids the same skills package. Maybe there's a club or a parenting guide or something that they all get," Echo said sarcastically. "My mom found out what he was teaching me seven years ago and she kicked him out of my life because she thought he was a bad influence. Never saw him again until five years ago, and then never again after that. I can only assume he's on the job for good and done with me or dead."

The boys were silent and stiff, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Echo talking about dead fathers who were never around because of hunting reminded them uncomfortably of their own dad again. Echo noticed their looks and sighed.

"Sorry," she apologized. "Didn't mean to overshare, but like I said, I haven't ever been able to talk openly about hunting stuff and how much I miss him, or how mad I am at him sometimes. Nobody would understand. I haven't seen or heard from him in five years and yet I'm still all boo-hoo about him leaving in front of perfect strangers. Won't happen again."

Her face was stoic and closed off, but Dean could tell she was embarrassed and feeling alone again after finding people she'd been pretty sure would understand her and how she felt. Now she was thinking she'd been wrong about them being potential friends, he could tell. He knew what it was like to shut out the world or make fun of it when you felt like it never listened to you anyway, so he did his best to make her feel less awkward, but he wasn't used to women who were so like the two of them who didn't fully participate in the 'bury your feelings' behavior hunters typically engaged in.

"No, don't worry about it. Sam and I know a thing or two about absent fathers, trust us. One time, he-," he started, but Echo interrupted him.

"It's fine. You don't have to be all chick-flick 'let's share our feelings' just because I made everything temporarily awkward. Seriously. I appreciate the effort, but let's be honest. I'm an ally to you, a resource, not your buddy. I mean, we've known each other for less than a day. It's cool, I understand," she said tersely. "Let's just get to the school and see if we can't figure out how to fix this mess so you two can move on to your next hunt and I can go back to working in the library. C'mon."

With that, she grabbed her jacket and swept out of the room, leaving the brothers to scramble to shove books on the reshelve carts and gather their things and follow her to the parking lot. They had to jog to make it to Baby and get her started before Echo peeled out of the lot and roared down the road. It was all they could do to catch up and keep up for a few miles before she slowed down to the speed limit and let them trail behind her. True to her word on the phone, she got them there in ten minutes, though, to be fair, the school wasn't that far away because the town was pretty small. They parked in the school lot and headed for the building. There were a couple of police cars, but no tape outside the building, so the scene of the attack must have been pretty localized. Echo marched through the doors and waved at the police to let the boys through when they tried to block the way. The three walked down the hallway towards the classroom with all the cops around it , but Echo hung a right turn before they reached it. She strode purposefully towards a set of double doors and pushed through them into what looked like the cafeteria, then called the name they'd heard her use on the phone.

"Tess?" she raised her voice over the clangor of students and teachers huddled around the little tables.

"Echo?" a small voice hollered from the front left corner of the room.

"I'm over here, honey!" Echo called back.

And suddenly there was a sound of running feet and almost before the brothers could register the blurry form of a little girl speeding towards their new acquaintance, the shape launched herself through the air into Echo's open arms. Echo cradled the back of the girl's head and kissed her hair. She squeezed the girl, Tess, and spoke to her gently.

"I was worried about you. Are you okay? Were you there, when it happened? Is your mom here?" Echo fired off the questions urgently.

Tess squirmed until Echo let her lean back so she could see the child's face. "I'm fine, yes I was there and it was scary, and what do you think?" she responded with a raised eyebrow. Sam and Dean had never seen such a young kid so practiced at sass. Well, besides themselves, of course.

Echo smiled fondly, with a little sadness. "So, no, then," she answered Tess's query. She tightened her lips by way of reply because it was more statement than question. "I know it's probably not fun to remember, but can you tell me what happened in your classroom?" Echo requested.

Tess nodded seriously and answered. "Yeah, no problem. We were just sitting there and Mrs. G was teaching us about the state capitals when out of nowhere Vice Principal Jenson burst into the classroom and started hitting her and yelling about how she'd abandoned 'us,' but I don't know who he meant. Everybody was screaming and a janitor came in to help, but he just knocked him away and locked the door to the room before going after her again. I grabbed his wrist to try and make him quit..." Echo frowned at her here. "and his wrist started smoking and he- he hissed at me and tried to shake me off, but then he just fell down and there was this whoosh and there was a scary man in weird clothes being all see through and he came at me so I tried to push him away, but my hand went, it went through him and he disappeared and I know you believe me even though the grown ups and the police think I made it up," she finished without hardly pausing for breath. The kid talked at a hundred miles an hour.

"Were you wearing the ring I gave you?" Echo asked. Tess held up her hand by way of response and the brothers saw a glint of dull metal on her right ring finger. Echo smiled. "Good girl. You did a good job saving Mrs. Gillespie, but from now on if there are scary men I want you to stay safe, okay?" Tess nodded. "Good. Did the scary man say anything or did the Vice Principal say anything else?" Tess shook her head. "Alright then. Thank you for telling me. Do you need me to take you home?"

"No, my aunt is picking me up when the police let everybody leave. I'll see you on Monday, though," Tess turned her down.

"Okay, honey. See you then," she said. She lowered Tess to the ground and gave her hand a final squeeze before turning to go.

Tess waved at them as they left, and the brothers felt a little superfluous, so Sam tried to break the stony silence by bringing up a question he had forgotten about since the attack in the alley.

"So, that's why the woman's face started smoking back in the alley," he mused. "You were wearing an iron ring."

Echo glanced back at them and considered Sam, and for a moment he didn't think she'd answer, but she eventually replied, "Yeah, I'm good at punching things, so I wanted to be able to punch ghosts if the need arose. I gave Tess one too to keep her a little safer."

"Who is she, to you, I mean," Dean asked carefully. He wasn't sure if she was still mad at them or not.

"She's a kid I babysit. Being a library worker is not without its needs for supplementary income, so I do the odd job or two around town. Her mom is a raging alcoholic and is more often than not passed out on the couch, so I take care of her a lot. She's like a little sister to me," Echo answered. "Which reminds me, which one is the younger brother? For the sake of ironic heights and the way you stand slightly in front of him even when you're next to him, I'd put my money on Sam, but I've been wrong before."

"Got it in one," Sam replied. "You're really good at this detail thing."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, but it would have been embarrassing for everyone if it had taken me more than two guesses," Echo replied with a smirk, seemingly over her earlier irritation with the Winchester brothers. "You want to head back to the library or try to interview Mrs. Gillespie?"

"Honestly, I'm still a little fed up with research. But, if the lady is in as bad of shape as you said she was, she's still gonna be too hopped up on morphine to talk right now," Dean said.

"So what do you suggest?" she asked.

"Other people have been attacked, right? Well, they're not hopped up on morphine, so we could talk to them. After, we can grab dinner and head back to the motel to put together details and see if we can't find the connection to the vics," he replied.

"Sounds good. Let's get to work," Echo agreed.

So, the Winchesters went and talked to the people who had been attacked, using their fake FBI badges. At first, they thought that people simply didn't know anything about what happened, but a pattern began to emerge after the third person. Echo mentioned that they all seemed to freeze up when they were asked why they thought they were attacked. They were all definitely hiding something, but the question was, were they hiding the _same_ thing? Echo suggested that they try talking to the people who were possessed, but Sam said they wouldn't remember much other than not being in control of their bodies and Dean said that the sheriff was not fond of them and would look a bit too closely at their badges before letting them talk to anyone in police custody anyway, so they gave up and went to dinner at Rae's. Echo had a usual for dinner there, too. A burger with the works, which Dean also ordered. Sam grimaced at the carnivores devouring hot greasy meat like it was their last meal and internally smirked at how similar they looked. Echo peered up at him from her food and rolled her eyes like she knew what he'd been thinking, which wouldn't have surprised him. He did get the allegedly perfect berry pie, along with the other two, and it got even the Dean Seal of Approval. As nice as dinner had been, with little conversation other than hunting stories, they had to buckle down and figure out where to look for info next.

"I say we try to talk to the teacher tomorrow," Sam suggested, and the others agreed.

"Tomorrow, we find answers," Echo said.

She was glad that she'd likely be rid of the problem plaguing her town soon, but she was saddened that it would mean the departure of her new allies, whom she was only just getting to know. She felt a little silly for getting so attached to people she barely knew, but they reminded her so much of her dad, and there was a... connection of some kind. She was sure of it, but she wasn't sure why. She only knew she'd have to get to the bottom of it before they solved the case because then the only thing she'd be seeing of the two charming brothers would be the back end of Dean's precious Impala as she faded to a speck in their rearview mirror.


	4. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Hey! I just realized that I haven't actually named the town Echo lives in. I looked up names of small towns and Virginia and picked one from a travel blog that looked like it could have some kind of farmland. Other than that, anything I get right about Fincastle, Virginia is purely coincidental. I also don't know the official rules of poker. But good news: finally you learn Echo's horrible birth name! It's a mouthful.

Chapter 3: Ecclesia Sanguinis

They ended up in the brothers' motel room, trying to piece together any connection between the victims. They were different ages, had different careers, went to different churches or no church at all, and lived on different streets. Two of them were in the same book club, but that was the only connection the Winchesters had found so far.

"There has to be something we're missing," Sam huffed in frustration.

"I dunno, man. We've looked at everything we can think of. Echo, you got any ideas?" Dean asked.

"Sorry, no. I'm just as stuck as you guys. I have exactly zero ideas left," she apologized. "No local insight on this one. So what do we do now?"

"Well, unless we wanna break into the library, we're pretty much out of options other than Sam's computer until morning comes and we can talk to the teacher or go back to research," Dean said.

"I've been trying, but so far it seems like any info we want isn't going to be digital," Sam said, closing the laptop.

"Alright, so what do we _do_? Do I just go home?" Echo wondered.

"Well, there's always poker, or Sam could beat us at the Scrabble game in the closet," Dean suggested.

"Pffft, please. I could completely trash Sam at Scrabble. I work in a small town library. There's not a whole lot I have to do, so I have a lot of free time at work, and the only thing to do is read some of the books nobody checks out thanks to e-readers. My vocabulary's nothing to shake a stick at," Echo explained. Dean chuckled. "What?"

"Nothing. You just reminded me of Bobby for a second, that's all," Dean said.

"This is the not-dad?" Nods. "Well, then I'll take that as a compliment," she drawled. "Now, enough yapping, I have a Scrabble game to win."

She came close, but a decade of library books in Fincastle was no match for a Stanford education and years of hunting research in ancient books full of middle English and unnecessarily long words. It was a tie until Sam put 'wendigo' with the w on a triple word score box and won the game. Echo swore.

"How did you beat me? I expected you to use a whole lot of hunting words, but I put down more than you! What the heck is a predilection, anyway?" she asked.

"I should have warned you, kid. That fancy law school plus me letting him do most of the research for years has given him a stupidly large collection of big words that literally no one from this century still uses besides him," Dean said with a note of pride. He obviously thought his little brother was pretty smart.

"I'll get you next time," she said without thinking. She realized that it implied they would be staying or coming back, so she covered quickly. "I mean, you can't be good at every game, right? What else do we have?"

She actually did win a couple hands of poker, which mildly impressed the brothers. Dean, unsurprisingly, was really good at it and won most of the hands. They played with Oreos for chips from a package of cookies that Echo had picked up from the gas station down the road. After the third hand she'd won, Sam voiced his curiosity.

"I've only beaten Dean once. How have you done it three times in one night?" he inquired.

"The reading people thing," she explained. "I can pick up your tells in a few hands, but you guys are much harder to read than most people. It's like you take any emotions you feel and smother them ruthlessly." The brothers were silent and uncomfortable. "Wait, is that what you actually do? Is that what it's like to be a hunter?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "It's not an easy job, and it'll get to you if you let it, all of the impossible decisions you have to make. The people who get left behind. So, it's kind of habit to push down your feelings so they don't get in the way of doing what has to be done."

"Dean," Sam admonished. This girl was barely an adult. She didn't need their baggage.

"She needs to know what it's like, Sammy. A promise to her dad might not keep her out of this mess when she realizes exactly how dang good she is at this. I'm not letting her make that decision blind," Dean insisted. He had a real soft spot for kids. That meant he wasn't inclined to sugar coat anything.

"Um, not to interrupt the testosterone-laden sibling rivalry, but I meant it when I said I am only gonna deal with trouble as it comes. Now give me my winnings and let's move on to the next hand. FYI, I'm eating some of my pile. Deal with it," Echo mumbled the last sentence around a mouthful of cookies, making the two soften the smallest amount and do as she asked, happy enough for a change of subject. Dean sneaked a couple from his stash, too.

Several hands of poker and any other card game the three could think of later, Echo yawned deeply. Dean eyed their tired companion, then the clock. It was time they got some sleep if they were going to be any use to anybody tomorrow.

"I think it's time to hit the hay," he said, standing and stretching. "Need to recharge if more ghosts are gonna try to kill us in the morning."

"Okay," Echo yawned. "I'll go on home and let you two sleep."

"I don't know if you should be driving," Sam pointed out. "You look pretty beat. It's been a long day. Why don't you crash here and go home when you wake up?"

"Reasonable suggestion," Echo replied, blinking sleepily. "But I'll have to decline. Only two beds, you two don't look like the types to bunk together, and I'm certainly not sharing or making one of you give up a bed in the room you paid for. I'm going to head home. I've driven on less sleep."

She tried to punctuate her statement by moving purposefully towards the door like the matter was over and done, but she swayed on her feet when she stood and Dean almost had to catch her, but she steadied herself on the table.

"Okay, maybe I need a little shuteye before I'm ready to operate my bike," she admitted. "But I'm taking the couch. No arguments."

The brothers wanted to be chivalrous, but she had her face set and they recognized from their own faces the look of stubbornness that meant she wasn't going to budge, so they each gave up a blanket or pillow and let her take the faded sagging couch in the corner of the motel room. Plus, they had to agree that they weren't keen on sharing a bed either. She was out like a light in a minute. The Winchester boys decided to take the opportunity to talk privately.

"So what do you think of her, Sammy?" Dean asked.

"She's a heck of a hunter for someone who's never done it before. I wonder who her dad was in the hunting world, but I don't want to ask since she said he's probably dead. The promise he had her make is the kind you ask for when you know you're not coming back," he answered.

"Well, I wanna know what's up with that sword," he answered, eyeing the weapon in its sheath which was leaning against the arm of the couch within the girl's easy reach. That was the kind of habit you developed by being a soldier, not a librarian. "There are definitely things she's not telling us, and her 'reading people' thing is more than deductive skills, for sure. I don't know what they are, though. Or where they come from."

"Yeah, she can read people a little too well for someone who's never left Fincastle. There's gotta be a supernatural explanation, but the question is: was she born psychic or made, like with a demon deal?" Sam agreed.

"Could be a thing like what happened to you," Dean pointed out. "Somebody maybe slipped her demon blood. Or she could be Fallen. Not a prophet, though. Doesn't seem to get flashes of the future."

"At least not that she's told us about. She's a pretty good liar, but she obviously knows something is up with her intuition other than the detail thing. I'll admit that she really is good at coming up with real world explanations for the things she knows," Sam continued.

"Wherever her powers come from, I don't think she's evil," Dean replied. "She seems like a good kid. And she's not possessed, since she drank the same Jesus Juice coffee as us and she's wearing iron without going black-eyed or being in pain."

"Could be a metal that looks like iron," Sam argued. "And we can't be sure that she actually laced that coffee, since neither of us would feel anything whether it was there or not."

"She's wearing a freaking anti-possession charm. No demon's getting past that," Dean shot back. "What's your deal with this chick anyway?"

"I can't explain it. There's something scary familiar about her but I can't quite figure out what it is. Doesn't she seem familiar to you?" Sam asked.

"She does look kinda like a short girl version of you, and she uses the same kinds of words," Dean said. "Plus it would be just like you to think of holy salt water. You came up with the pre-recorded exorcism, after all."

"She does not look like me. If anything, she looks like you. Same eye color, same build, same sarcasm, same appetite. It's not just about how she looks, though. It's- I don't know what it is, but I know it's something," Sam insisted.

"Nice explanation, there, Professor. Really cleared things up. Anyway, I say that even if we don't understand her or know her tragic backstory or whatever, it doesn't mean we should automatically distrust her, is all," Dean sassed.

"You just want to stay close and protect her because she's practically a kid. You know you have a soft spot for kids, especially ones from hunting families with crap fathers," Sam snorted.

"So, she came from a similar background to us. So what? What's wrong with wanting to keep her safe because she's on the young side?" he questioned.

"You're letting it cloud your judgement, Dean. If she was our age, you would never trust her right out of the gate and you would have hit on her a lot already by this point," Sam shot back. "We don't even know if she's human, or anything much about her that doesn't have to do with hunting."

"Since when do you care about people's lives outside of hunting? And we don't know anything about her because when she felt the need to share, we gave off vibes that told her to shut up and shut down. She tried to talk to us and we didn't let her," Dean argued.

"You tried to get her to open up again, but she wouldn't have it. Not our fault. We tried," Sam reminded him.

"So we try again. I'm not saying we have to do it on tiptoe, either. We can just ask her directly what's up with the psychic thing. I even have a theory," he said proudly.

"What?" Sam wondered.

"I think she's an empath. Senses other people's emotions. Not saying she doesn't pick up other stuff too, but knowing how people feel even when they're stone-faced is her main thing," Dean suggested.

"You're right," a groggy voice from the corner of the room spoke up.

They whirled to find Echo sitting up on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, head bowed.

"That's what I can do. I've had it since before my dad left. When I was eight, I thought everybody could feel what other people did. I freaked everybody out pretty good a few times before I figured out that it was just me. Thought I was crazy for a bit, then Dad mentioned that all the weird creepy stuff I've ever heard about is real and being psychic seemed more plausible. Nobody knows. Not my mom. Not even him," she whispered.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Dean asked.

"Well, Sam already thinks I'm a freak. And your whole job is whacking the heads off of supernatural stuff. Or setting it on fire. Or shooting it in the brain. I don't know you. How was I supposed to know you wouldn't kill me for being what I am?" she answered.

"Psychics are born the way they are, and they usually don't hurt anybody with their powers. It's our job to kill stuff that kills other people, not humans minding their own business who happen to be able to read people like books," Sam explained. "And I don't think you're a freak. There's just something familiar about you that I can't place and it's driving me nuts."

"Me too. At the risk of sounding too corny, I sense a... connection, between the three of us, but I can't place what it is and it's bugging me too," Echo agreed.

"So how do your powers work? Actual mind reading?" Dean asked.

"Not exactly. It's just- you know how sometimes you have a hunch, a gut feeling, a tingle on the back of your neck- an instinct that lets you know something's off or that there's more to the story? Well, I have that times about 100. I just... know things without really knowing how I know them, like when there's a crime in progress or a thing that looks like a person isn't really a person, or if someone near me is mad or uncomfortable or happy or depressed or guilty," she explained. "I'm also kind of like a human lie detector. Not just like what people say, but seeing past supernatural disguises and stuff, since their whole appearance is a lie. That's how I knew what was up at the post office. I could see the ghosts lurking under the skin of the people."

"Why put holy water in our coffee, then?" Sam asked.

"How am I supposed to know if my ability works on demons? I've never seen one," Echo said. "But I know holy water works."

"That reminds me," Dean said. "How do you know so much about this stuff, anyway? Did your dad have a long time to talk to you about it?"

"No, he left me a book that he wrote. It's kind of like a manual on how to kill monsters. You just look up the name of the thing and there's an entry with what it is, what hurts it, how it hides, and how to defend yourself from it. I've read it cover to cover a bunch of times," she answered.

"Can I see it?" Sam requested.

Echo hesitated. She'd never shown her book to anyone before, for obvious reasons. But if she wanted them to trust her, she couldn't hide things. It was the most important thing she had left of her father, though, so she handed it over only after she asked him to be careful with it.

"It's all I have left of him. Just- be careful, okay? And don't read the last pages. They're personal. He wrote those in as a letter to me. I don't really wanna share them," she requested.

Sam nodded his agreement, but despite his silent promise to be careful with the book, he almost dropped Echo's most prized possession when he opened it.

"Dean," he choked out, handing the book to him.

"Sammy, what's-" Dean broke off when he got a good look at the random page Sam had opened to, an entry on vampires. He scanned the lines again, just to be sure. Then he asked Echo in a strained voice, "Echo, what's your father's name?"

Echo was worried. The boys were radiating a ton of negative emotions. Grief, guilt, anger, sadness, shock. All of it flooded her system to the point of overload. The reason she'd been so exhausted was because she had been straining to keep her empathic connection with them wide open because reading them didn't come as naturally to her as reading everyone else did. Now, she was struggling to close it against the hurricane of their emotions battering her like they were her own. She tried to separate them out, but the force of what they felt overwhelmed her. She collapsed to her knees and her eyes rolled back in her head, tears flowing from them. She heard them calling her name like she was underwater. Most of their other emotions ebbed out, except for the shock, as worry for her took over. It was like a deafening roar became a murmur, and she slowly came back to herself, blinking water from her eyes. Wait, what? Her whole face was wet. She was on the couch again, Dean leaning over her and Sam standing behind him. she had to smile at the expressions on their faces. Taking on ghosts: no problem. Dealing with fainting women: panic and wariness. She let the empathic connection close to normal proportions and took a few slow breaths.

"You okay, Echo?" Dean asked.

"I'm fine. I'm just an idiot, is all. I was so tired earlier because I was trying so hard to read you two. It wore me out, and then you didn't suppress anything and it all kind of rushed me at once. I strained the connection so wide that your emotions got all tangled with mine and I short-circuited," she explained, sitting up slowly. Sam handed her a glass of water and she drained half of it in a gulp. "Thanks. Um, by the way, why exactly did my dad's journal make you freak out? Is he infamous in the hunting world or something? And why am I soaking wet?"

"Well, we didn't know what to do, so we splashed you with some water to try and wake you up," Sam admitted sheepishly. "It didn't really do anything. I don't think you even noticed. And about your dad's journal, well...Um, kind of, but that's not why we were surprised. We recognized the handwriting, but we need you to tell us just to be sure. What is your father's name?" he asked.

"John," she said. "John Winchester."

The brothers exchanged a glance, not sure how to proceed. Dean, as per usual, decided on the direct approach.

"That's our dad, too. Our last name is Winchester. That makes you our half sister. Any questions?" he said brusquely to cover the fact that he was annoyed with John Winchester for teaching his only daughter hunting skills and then forbidding her from using them. Dad had dragged her into the hunting life to a lesser extent than he had done to them, but it bothered him all the same.

"Well," Echo said, still in shock, reeling from this new information. "I guess that explains why I seem so familiar to you, and you to me. I have brothers. I mean, I knew I had brothers, but I had no idea it was you guys. God, this is weird. So you're his real kids that he always went back to, huh?"

Dean and Sam were uncomfortable. "Yeah. He told you about us?" Sam asked, wondering why John had never told them about her, or Adam, for that matter. And why John would talk to Echo about hunting when there didn't seem to be any creatures out for revenge like there had been with their half brother, who hadn't known about the stuff in the dark until wraiths ate him alive and screaming. John Winchester's motives continued to be a mystery, even from the grave.

"Not by name. I don't know why, but he always referred to you two as his youngest and his oldest. He included you guys in his stories about monster hunting that I thought were made up until five years ago. He also let the odd comment slip about how proud you guys made him and when he told me about demons and stuff, he mentioned how he wished he'd realized what he'd done by dragging you two into hunting before it was too late," she answered.

"He told you he was proud of us?" Dean asked, incredulous. Would have been nice if Dad had seen fit to tell them that to their faces once in a while.

"Not in so many words," Echo admitted. "But the whole emotion reading thing? When he said stuff like 'my oldest is really protective of his younger brother' or 'my youngest is real good at school, focus like you wouldn't believe for a kid' I could feel the pride coming off of him. It was hard for me to read him, too, without really concentrating, but I could tell how much he loved you two. Honestly, sometimes it made me jealous. Sometimes, though, I was glad that I only had to deal with him for short periods of time. You've been teenagers. You know how it is."

"Yeah, John Winchester was better in small doses," Dean muttered a little bitterly.

"So he is dead," Echo guessed. Dean winced, realizing he'd been a little callous by using the past tense so readily. He had been her father, too.

"Yeah, Dad was trying to take down the demon that killed our mom and instead sold his soul to it to save my life," he admitted. "He's gone."

She nodded, and her voice cracked a little when she spoke. "Well, I'm sorry he's gone. It's gotta be harder on you two than me. I'll miss him. I always kinda hoped he'd come back. Did you guys get the demon?"

"Dean shot him with a gun that kills anything, including demons. He's dead, for good," Sam replied.

"Good. So, now that we know we're related, it's time for a better introduction. My terrible name is Eilonwy Euphrosynia Winchester, but please, for God's sake, continue to call me Echo. It's not totally hideous like my birth name," their sister said.

"Eilonwy Euphrosynia? I mean this in the nicest way possible, but what was your mom smoking when she picked that?" Dean asked.

"In what possible way could that be taken as nice, Dean?" Sam reprimanded. "I'm sorry about him. Bet you wish you had different brothers, huh?"

"Nah, you guys seem pretty cool. And my name is part forgotten Disney princess, part variation on the name of a Catholic saint. After the supernatural craziness Dad saved her from, she thought that a holy name would be a good idea. Why she didn't pick something like Mary or Theresa, I'll never know. She never wanted to know the details about whatever John killed to protect the townspeople, so I never found out what exactly happened twenty-three years ago," Echo said.

"Echo, I have a very important question. What is up with the sword?" Dean interjected.

"Oh, that?" she laughed. "Not that bar-brawl type fighting where you punch someone till they pass out isn't great and all, but I wanted to learn something with a little more... elegance. So I take Kendo, which is like Japanese fencing, but with bamboo swords that resemble legitimate swords that can actually kill something as opposed to give it a papercut like traditional European foils. My sword is real because the only master I could find anywhere around here is a little more hardcore than the ones that use wooden swords like you're supposed to. I don't mind. I like the challenge of knowing that you really can't let yourself get hit because the sword could slice your leg off. I was going to pick up a package on the way to lessons when the whole thing at the post office went down."

She pulled the sword from the sheath by her leg and held it out laid across her palms. Dean picked it up and turned it over.

"Is this silver with iron inlay?" he asked, seriously impressed.

"Yep. I had her custom made. Cost me two months' wages, but I'm glad I did. her balance is a lot better than my first sword. I take it she passes your inspection?" she inquired with a raised eyebrow.

"She's gorgeous," Dean whistled, running a thumb over the edge of the blade, wincing when it drew blood at the slightest touch. "Sharp," he commented.

"It's a sword, Dean, of course it's sharp," Sam snarked. "Can I see it- er, her?" Dean handed it over reluctantly. "Remarkable craftsmanship," he commented, returning it to her.

"Thanks. So now that we've covered the bases of stuff we didn't know about each other for now, how about some sleep?" she suggested. "I'm still pretty tired."

They agreed, and a little Winchester sleepover with actual sleeping took place in the room of a motel in Fincastle Virginia. The brothers went to sleep wondering how many other half-siblings they had floating around and if any of them were as smart, capable, funny, and similar to them as Echo. The sister went to sleep comforted in knowing that her brothers were nearby and that they were sure to beat the ghosts and save her town- together. She dreamed of a life that could have been, and of hunting with her siblings that weren't so bad after all. Perhaps it was a little premature, but she truly liked her brothers and hoped fervently that her original impression that they would kill the ghosts, leave town, and never look back would not come to pass now that they knew they were related. She didn't expect them to stay, but maybe they could come back and visit... or take her with them, promise or not. Dad had been teaching her this stuff for ages. How could he expect her to never use it? Dean was right, she felt a rightness when she took down those ghosts. She knew that all of hunting couldn't be that simple, or that bloodless, but she was willing to take it on.

Morning came and the brothers, not very used to dealing with hunting women since Jo and Ellen had died, were shocked when Echo did not insist on going home for clean clothes. She did borrow the motel shower, but she just put on the stuff from yesterday and sprayed it with a mini bottle of Febreze she had in her bag.

Catching their twin looks of disbelief, she laughed and explained, "I hate doing laundry until it's absolutely necessary, but I don't want to stink. Febreze seemed like the perfect solution."

That explained, they went in their usual caravan to the hospital to question Mrs. Gillespie. The officer minding the door was new to the Winchesters, so with an explanation that Echo was there to be a comforting and familiar presence to her former teacher while she was questioned, along with the fake FBI badges, got them into the woman's hospital room. Echo felt a pang at seeing her former teacher laid out in a hospital bed, helpless, bruised, and swathed in bandages. The fluorescent lights washed out her already pale paper-thin skin to a scarily pallid shade. In short, the poor old woman looked awful. At the entrance of the Winchester trio, her eyes fluttered open. Seeing Echo, she smiled.

"Hello, Eilonwy. Oh, me. I forgot. It's Echo, now isn't it? I'm sorry. Have you come to visit me?" the elderly lady asked in a voice made tremulous by age and something else.

Echo sensed a pang of apprehension through her empathic link. She supposed her brothers (brothers!) in their government suits cut an imposing figure, especially if she was as reluctant to answer their questions as the last victims had been. She felt bad that they would have to bring up clearly unpleasant memories, but it was necessary to know what had happened and why these people specifically had been attacked so they could help, and hopefully make it stop. Echo cleared her throat.

"Not exactly, Mrs. G. These gentlemen are from the FBI and I'm here to help them ask you a few questions about the attack. We need to know why you think the vice principal would want to hurt you," she explained.

"I always knew you'd end up in law enforcement. I remember the times you got in trouble for dispensing playground justice, like when Bradley Brown teased little Marcia Walters about her braces and you just about broke his jaw. The other teachers thought it wasn't appropriate for a little girl to hit like a prizefighter, but I was secretly proud of you for standing up for that poor girl," Mrs. Gillespie said.

Echo blushed at the compliment as well as the memory of that day. She'd had ISS for three days and had to clap chalkboard erasers for two weeks. She'd been sneezing chalk dust for days after the fact. But she wasn't distracted by the praise. She felt a wave of fervent hope that she would drop the subject coming from the woman. She shook her head.

"I remember, Mrs. G, but you need to answer these gentlemen's' questions, now, okay?" Echo insisted gently.

"I can't," she whispered urgently. "I can never speak of it. It's too shameful, and you wouldn't believe half of it. Please, don't make me talk about that terrible day."

Echo detected a steady stream of one emotion: fear. She felt a pang of her own emotion, regret that her former teacher was lying in a hospital bed begging her not to ask her the question they so desperately needed answered, and that despite how sad it made her to push the poor old woman, they had to know why the ghosts were after her in order to stop any further attacks.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. But we need to know why you were attacked if we're gonna keep other people from getting hurt," Dean entered the conversation. "As for unbelievable, you'd be surprised what we've seen in this job. Can you tell us what happened, exactly?"

"I don't know where to start..." she trailed off uncertainly.

"How about twenty-three years ago?" Echo suggested to Mrs. Gillespie's shock. "That's when this started, right? The first time my dad came to town."

"Yes, dear. I suppose that is indeed the beginning of the whole sordid affair, though at the time I thought it was the end. You see, the rise of the cult happened in the sixties, but the trend continued for years and sometime in the early eighties, one sprang up around here. They called themselves Ecclesia Sanguinis, the church of blood. I can hardly remember the specifics at this point, but the essence of it was that it was a brotherhood dedicated to predicting and bringing about the Second Coming. The world seemed a terrible place full of decaying morals: drugs, the Cold War, racism, unemployment, the list goes on. For young idealists and one mother who lost her son to an overdose, Ecclesia Sanguinis seemed like the place to make a change. Well, here I am justifying myself when you want to know the meat of the thing. Well, too late, I and a few of the cult members realized that we were doing little beyond ceremony and living in a commune, and what we were doing was not what we had signed on to do. Your father, Mr. Winchester, he somehow found out about us and our rituals. He came in under the guise of joining us and then tried to win over a few members to leave by getting us to see the truth of what we were: a Satan-worshipping cult trying to bring about the end of a world that was entirely fixable. When the leaders, the Morgensterns, a woman and her son, found out that he was trying to bring down the cult, they had him thrown out. They barricaded everyone in the barn that served as the chapel and said we needed to prove our faith in the way of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They set fire to the barn and led us in hymns, of all things, while the fire ate at the walls around us. I wanted to get out as soon as I knew what they were doing, but there were more devout followers than dissenters. If I tried to run, I would be stopped. Suddenly, your father broke through a corner of the barn with an axe and a borrowed fireman's garb. He shouted at me to gather the children, because he knew I was in my right mind. I did as I was told and the few others who shared my doubt of the rightness of the church helped me hold off the devout long enough to get the children and ourselves out. It was difficult, as they seemed to have unearthly strength, especially Mrs. Morgenstern and her son. Mr. Winchester tried to break through the lock on the door, to get the people out by force, but the walls wouldn't give anymore after his first breach. There was nothing we could do but watch our former friends burn. Anyway, I am certain that in some manner, the restless spirits of the old cult members are out for vengeance against those of us who escaped, the supposed heretics and traitors. I know it sounds unbelievable, but your father knew that we were playing with dark forces beyond our control, and he tried to save us from ourselves. Your mother was not among the cult members, but her dearest friend, Eloise, was one of those who was rescued. You wouldn't know her. She, along with many of us survivors, left town to get away from the past and the guilt that went with it. Your mother never wanted to know any details besides Eloise being alive and safe, so that's why you never heard this from her. As for your father, I can't speak for him, but from what I saw of him, he is a good man, no matter what your mother thinks," Mrs. Gillespie finished her story with a sigh.

Echo was reeling from the implications. They had been looking in the wrong decades all this time. The clothes were handmade because the cult was self-contained and isolated, not because the ghosts were hundreds of years old. At least now they had somewhere to start looking.

"Mrs. Gillespie," Sam began. "Thank you for telling us all this. It will be very helpful to our investigation and hopefully prevent more violence. If I may ask one more question, where is the barn that burned down?"

"It's about 2 or 3 miles behind the courthouse, at the top of a hill. Look for the tree that's been blackened by lightning and bear left. I hope this helps," the old woman sighed.

Sam finished scribbling down the directions. "Yes, thank you, ma'am. We'll leave you to rest, now."

The Winchesters left the hospital and talked over what to do next. Armed with correct information, they went back to the library to research in the right decade of newspapers. It didn't take long to find a couple of mostly unhelpful articles on the Ecclesia Sanguinis cult. The pages for the right dates had been ripped out of Dad's journal, but from the information they had, it was pretty easy to determine that there had been demons involved somehow. That decided, all that was left to do was gear up and hike out to the abandoned field where the commune once rested and figure out how the ghosts were being anchored here if they had been burned alive. Then, gank the problem and save the remaining cult escapees. It wasn't a routine salt and burn, but it was probably going to be easy enough to get rid of two disgruntled spirits. Or so they thought. Echo's intuition was prickling, but it didn't seem to have a direction, so she ignored her uneasiness, not wanting to seem weak or afraid in front of the two capable hunters who for some reason were still putting up with their newbie kid sister. She was more afraid of letting them down than trying to take down her first ghosts. Her mistake.

A few miles away from the parking lot where the Winchester family checked their weaponry in the gathering dust and prepared to take on two ghosts in the burned shadow of a lost creepy church, spirit after spirit flickered into being in the charred husk of their erstwhile cathedral, forming a circle of many more than two, arms raised in supplication to their master, a wordless screech rising from their lips like the smoke from that long-ago fire, lost on the wind.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: This Is Harder Than It Looks

The Winchester trio regarded the scene before them in silence. Even after over two decades, the air of death and the burned husk of the barn and the crumbling other buildings remained. There was a circle of graves inside the barn. Echo counted seventeen simple wooden markers with names scratched onto them. That was seventeen lives snuffed out that day her- their dad had saved those who would listen. Her eyes stung for a second, but she blinked rapidly, turning her head slightly away from her brothers, not wanting to cry in front of these men who knew death every day with barely a blink.

"Well, get to shoveling. Looks like we got more to take care of than we realized. Let's handle the graves of the two leaders first, since they've been the ones causing all the trouble. But we'd better salt and burn them all just to be safe," Dean instructed.

"You need a shovel?" Sam said, holding one out to her.

"No thanks, I got it," she replied, taking a little satisfaction out of the looks on their faces when she whipped out the collapsible shovel and snapped it into place.

"You gonna stand there looking pretty all day or are you going to start digging sometime this week?" she asked, smirking.

That earned her a chuckle from her brothers, who got two work on the two main graves. She started in on one across the circle from theirs, getting a jump on the work they'd have to do later. The graves were shallow, so it didn't take long to hit the wood of the coffin lids. They were simple pine boxes that broke apart easily under the Winchesters' hands. Things had been going pretty well until the first shakes of salt hit the bodies. Then, thunder rumbled and the wind picked up. Before either of the boys had a chance to pour the lighter fluid, the ghosts they'd seen before flickered into existence and shoved at their chests, sending them flying away from the open graves. With a shout of surprise, Echo whipped her sword off of her back and leapt at the ghosts. She dodged a fist from the boy and swung the blade through the woman, who dissipated with a scream. She knew she'd be getting a blow from behind because of that, but wasn't prepared for the speed of it. Echo spun towards the ground when a ghostly fist connected with her shoulder, but managed to keep her footing without impaling herself on her own blade.

Sam and Dean got to their feet and provided backup before she could get hit again. Dean shot salt rounds at the ghost and Sam was tossing lighter fluid on the two corpses. He struck a match, but it was smacked from his hand and he was sent flying backwards, crushing two of the crosses.

"Sammy!" Dean yelled, swinging the shotgun up in the direction of where his brother had been, but not seeing anything until four completely new ghosts, all wearing the same kinds of clothes and cross necklaces, appeared in the spot.

Dean fired again and again, temporarily obliterating those, but from the corner of her eye, Echo spotted another three. She sliced through those and heard her younger older brother shout a warning from where he was picking himself up from wood debris.

"Echo, watch your five!" Echo whirled to the right 160 degrees, blade outstretched and took out another one that had been sneaking up behind her.

The main two were back, but Dean could see that they were staying near their graves, guarding them, away from the action while their followers herded the Winchesters in the opposite direction. Smart. Darn ghosts. New ones as well as the ones they had dissipated before materialized, making a total of 15 besides the leader and her son. 17 graves, 17 ghosts. Only 3 of which they could take down for good because only 3 of their graves were open.

"Sammy, Echo, any ideas about how to gank these guys? We can't exactly take a break to dig the rest of the graves open and we could only thin the herd by three as of now," Dean called.

"About the only option besides taking down three and probably getting killed is a tactical retreat at this point," Sam responded.

Echo heard the words, but only distantly. Something had been buzzing in her brain since all of the ghosts appeared. Something about the way they moved... She was beating herself up about not mentioning the weird feeling before setting out on this hunt for the sake of her own stupid pride, but that wasn't the only thing happening here. Keeping her stance wide and her sword ready, she scanned the spirits. What was bothering her about them? Her eyes caught on the two who were in charge. Their lips were moving silently. She couldn't make out the words, almost as if they were in a foreign language, but that wouldn't make sense because the cult had been based in her somewhat backwater American town. About the only other languages around here were the poorly spoken French, Spanish, and German at the local high school's required classes.

She looked at the followers, who stood unmoving, as if waiting for orders. Their faces were utterly blank and their eyes were glazed over, almost entirely milky blue. She would have described them as zombies if that hadn't been a whole different category of monster. Echo wondered what was going on in their minds when she had an idea. There had never been any ghosts to test it on before, but what if her ability worked on supernatural creatures. A lot of them could practically pass for human, so it would make sense. Tentatively, she probed the nearest ones with her empathic connection. On the surface, there was nothing, and she started to feel like her idea had been wrong, but then she searched deeper, pushed harder, and saw that the souls in front of her, while outwardly emotionless, were screaming and clawing inside their own heads, trying to get out of... something. She sensed a desperate need to be let out, to be released. Normally, she got more general impressions than actual words, but this time, as she opened herself up to the rest of the horde, one word kept ringing in her head like a chant or a wail: Help. Her eyes pricked with tears at the amount of pain and constriction she felt rolling off of the ghosts. A noise caught her attention and she realized Dean had been calling her name.

"Echo? You okay? You were seriously spaced out. Did you see something, like a vision?" he asked, and for once his concern was palpable even with the connection at normal proportions.

"I'm fine. I was just seeing if my ability works on ghosts. The short answer is yes," she replied, getting lost in the overwhelming sadness for these poor trapped spirits. What was holding them? There was no salt line. Did they just mean that they were stuck on this plane of existence?

"And the long answer?" Sam prompted, listening in with one eye on the hostile group.

"They're feeling... trapped. Like clawing at prison bars till your nails are torn and bloody with the fruits of your desperation and sorrow level trapped. They're crying out in pain because they're afraid," she said slowly.

"What? How is that possible? Ghosts don't really do fear," Dean protested at the same time Sam asked, "Trapped by what?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, they want to get away from it pretty badly," she murmured.

Dean thought for a minute, then looked at the ghosts who still hadn't moved. He took a step closer and they advanced. Taking a step back made them stop.

"They look possessed," Sam commented.

"What if they are?" Dean suggested.

"Ghosts usually do the possessing, not the other way around," Echo pointed out.

"Well, the ones in the back have been behaving like normal spirits, including possession. What if they're somehow controlling the other ones?" Sam said, warming up to the idea.

"I'll try to get a read from the other two," Echo offered, wanting to be helpful and not some weepy damsel in distress.

"Be careful," Dean reminded her.

Echo reached out again, this time to the other ghosts. The sense was immediate. Rage, betrayal, contempt, vengeance, all powerful and violent emotions. She felt a stab of curiosity from them as she probed deeper, looking for the motivation for why they resurfaced now. The thrill of fear down her spine as they turned their eyes in her direction was all her own. She wanted to pull back, but she needed to be brave, so she pushed harder, opening herself to the information coming from the spirits. She got one word: witch, before coldness invaded her senses. She tried to pull back, but invisible tendrils were hooked into her consciousness and she instead was yanked deeper. She struggled, losing this invisible war, but she managed to shout a piece of crucial information to her brothers. At least, it felt like a shout. It may have only been a whisper.

"They were a cult led by witches! The leaders are controlling-" she choked out before she succumbed to the ice crawling through her veins.

Dean had seen from the tension in Echo's face that she had been struggling with something, but without knowing what to punch or shoot, he wasn't sure how to help her. It had been worrying when her face screwed up in either pain or concentration, but the blankness that slid over her expression after she uttered that statement was terrifying. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slid to the ground. Sam started forward, calling her name, but Dean stopped him with a word.

"Sammy, look," he said quietly.

Echo was getting to her feet, slowly and awkwardly, limbs jerking like a marionette. Her sword dragged the ground and her head lolled upright. Her eyes were the empty milky blue of the ghosts'. Suddenly, she settled into an approximation of the fighting stance and brought the blade up, but she was facing them, not the spirits. They were the enemy. They noticed the woman who had led the cult raise her arms and flick one hand forward. Echo suddenly charged them, sword raised. Dean dodged and swung the blunt end of the gun at her shoulder, knocking her off balance. She jerked upright like she was pulled by strings but Sam was there, blocking her next swing with his shovel. It went on like that for a couple of minutes, Echo forced to attack, the boys trying their best not to hurt their newfound little sister too badly while avoiding blows themselves. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean noticed the male ghost raising his hands to motion the rest of the captive army in for backup.

It pained him to do it, but he needed to stop their one corporeal attacker and hopefully regain the third member of team Winchester, so he raised his shotgun, business end pointing at Echo, and pulled the trigger. She had been standing just in front of the slowly advancing horde, but the impact of the rock salt knocked her to the ground, skidding a few feet back into the midst of the spirits. Those who had been closest to her original position were disrupted for a moment, and that was all the opening the brothers needed. While fending off the possessed spirits. God, that was weird to think, Sam and Dean communicated a plan.

"If the leaders of the cult were witches, it would explain how powerful they are and why they can control people and ghosts. A little extra demon power to juice up the energy," Sam called.

"But how are they doing it? If they can get Echo, why not us?" Dean pointed out.

"Maybe the people in the cult were already at least a little under their power, but I don't know for Echo. Maybe opening herself up with her telepathic powers made her vulnerable. It looked like she was fighting some kind of inner battle before she collapsed," Sam suggested.

"Well, what can we do about it? Of everything she could have shouted at us before going down, why tell us about the mind-control specifi-?" Dean asked, cutting off with a grunt as a ghost got in a blow to his gut.

"That's it!" Sam called, blasting another one with rock salt. "To stop all of these, we just have to take out the leaders. Once they're not being controlled, they won't have a reason to fight us."

"Except that we're going to try to salt and burn them, Sammy," Dean pointed out.

"If you'd been forced to do whatever someone else wanted for who knows how long, wouldn't you be thankful for a little peace? We don't know that these guys are here on unfinished business. Maybe they just got dragged along for the ride with the main two," Sam suggested.

"Worth a shot," Dean agreed, since it was their only plan. "But I would like to remind you that 17 ghosts and a semi-formidable hunter don't want us anywhere near those graves. How do you suggest we get past that?"

"Be as obnoxious as possible," he said, flicking his eyes at the ground in the midst of the spirits.

"Wha...?" Dean began, but stopped when he spotted what Sam had: Echo very cautiously making her way toward the open graves. Huh. Salt must have knocked the possession connection loose. "Any plan right now is a good plan, so obnoxious it is. Luckily, this is something we're awesome at."

With that, he leapt at the ghosts and Sam joined in the fray. they managed to be sufficiently distracting until Echo struck the match and lit the male ghost's corpse on fire. When he disappeared in a burst of flame with a cry, half of the ghosts flicked out of existence, but the woman turned her eyes toward Echo and flung her into one of the remaining slabs of barn wall with an ominous crack. Dean and Sam called her name and Dean shot the woman with salt rounds, disrupting her long enough for Sam to get the match lit. She reappeared just in time to see it fall on her salted corpse and to vanish with a scream of rage the same way her son had. All of the ghosts were gone but one, a shy looking young man. Sam raised his weapon, but the thing made no move toward them.

"Thank you," it said. "They've been manipulating our minds since we joined up. I guess when we all died, it got stronger. The ones who figured out that it was in the necklaces broke the hold and got out. Those of us who died in them were trapped under their will until now. That girl, the one who listened, she needs help. Please."

Dean was absolutely speechless. Ghosts were not usually so articulate. Or worried about the living except to kill or scare them. Sam was more ready with words.

"Why are you telling us this?" he asked.

"I drew the short straw to be our representative. We just want to be put to rest and to thank you for freeing us. Especially her. We've been calling out for years, but nobody heard us till she came along. It would be lousy to let her go unhelped when she helped us," it replied.

Dean found his voice to ask a question that had been bugging him. "Why now? The people who betrayed the cult have been here for ages. You... your leader could have gotten revenge any time."

"The demon that was responsible for their power hasn't been on this plane for some time. Apparently, a big gate was opened and several got out, including him, and he only just now got in range for the energy to affect them and let them manifest here. We never felt the whole burning need for vengeance," it explained. "We just got dragged into all of this with those two. Mostly, they liked to do things themselves. We were mostly just a source to siphon extra energy from. I don't really know how it works except that I can talk to you normally because I don't have that whole blinding rage thing going on. My time is short, so just take care of her and finish the job of getting rid of us, okay? Thanks again."

With that, it flickered out and Sam and Dean were finally able to feel safe turning their backs on the place where it had been so they could take care of Echo. Dean crouched by he head. The sword was lying a couple of feet away, so at least she hadn't fallen on that. But as he assessed the damage, he realized that she hadn't needed to. Apparently, the cult had kept actual farm equipment in the barn at one time because after crashing into the wall, which had to have broken at least a few ribs, she had fallen straight onto the slightly upturned tines of a pitchfork. Blood seeped slowly across her stomach. Her head was drooped to the side, eyes closed. Her arms spread out from her body like the imprint angels leave when they die.

Angels. Cas. There was no way they could get to a hospital int time, but if Cas could show up in time, he could heal her.

"Cas!" he shouted. "Castiel!"

"Who's Cas?" she whispered hoarsely. Her eyes were open, the same green he saw in the mirror blinking up at him sleepily.

"He's an angel. Someone who can help," Sam explained, seeing that Dean was clenching his jaw at the amount of pain in her voice. "He can fix you."

"I don't know. Us Winchesters have a lot to fix, and this... sucks pretty bad. Are you s-sure he can do anything?" Echo murmured, breath hitching.

"He can if he gets his feathery butt here fast enough. Cas!" Dean hollered again.

He glanced around, seeing no sign of the trenchcoat clad angel. He swore quietly. He looked down at Echo, her battered body looking so small next to his and Sam's legs. There was a bruise blooming across her cheek and her lip was split, her hair haloed around her head, the same brown as Sam's. His little sister. It was weird to think. He had just met her and now she was dying because he'd let her come on this hunt that had turned out to be far more dangerous than he'd expected. He hardly knew her, but he felt guilty. He'd been selfish, letting her come. He'd just missed doing the job with a little sibling who felt like one, who looked up to him literally and figuratively in a way Sam didn't seem to anymore. He couldn't just let her die.

"Stop that," Echo coughed.

"What?" Dean asked.

"The guilt. It's rolling off of you like smoke and it's making me nauseated. This isn't your fault. It might be mine, but I'm pretty sure it was that witch ghost's fault. She's the one who tossed me onto the spikes of this thing. Not to whine, but your angel friend has lousy response time. I don't feel so good..." she trailed off, eyes fluttering closed.

"Come on, Echo. Stay with us. Cas will be here any second," Sam reassured her.

"Cas, come on! This is important," Dean called. When no answer was forthcoming, he made a decision. "That's it. We're gonna have to rely on human help and take her to a hospital. Given Cas's previous record, we should have led with that. Come on."

He and Sam carefully lifted her up off of the prongs, prompting another worrying spout of blood. Sam carried her while Dean hurried to Baby to open the back door and get her started. He held their sister while Sam slid into the back so he'd be positioned to try and make some temporary patches for her wound on the ride to the hospital. Dean handed her carefully into the back and vaulted into the driver's seat, driving before he had his seatbelt on. He whipped out a phone and called ahead to the ER so they'd have everything prepped when they got there. Those precious minutes saved getting things together might make all the difference. Sam had to shake Echo back to alertness to answer questions about blood type and the like. They peeled into the parking lot and drove straight up to the entrance. Dean was out of the Impala and ready to take Echo before the EMT's made it out with the gurney. He insisted on helping them get her out and onto the gurney and he and Sam ran in after them when they wheeled her in. She stopped the guy who tried to put an oxygen mask on her.

"Wait," she said weakly. "I need to say something. Sam, Dean, you've been good brothers to me. I don't regret... anything. You need to know. So stop... blaming yourselves, okay? I don't. Might be too soon to say, but I love you guys. Remember that in case- just in case."

The EMT finally got her mask on her when her wrists dropped and wheeled her into the operating room. The earnest look in her eyes, the trust, just about killed the boys. They felt like they'd let her down. They decided to take shifts waiting at the hospital while the other one went to work on the graves and cleanup. They still had a job to do, after all. No matter who died or didn't, the job would always be there. It was Sam who was in the room when Echo woke up after a long surgery and a longer period of being unconscious.

"Sam?" she asked, voice hoarse from disuse.

"Echo, you're awake. How are you holding up?" he asked.

"A little sore. I think the nurse needs to up the morphine dose. I haven't had any wild dreams or hallucinations yet, so clearly however much they're dosing me with is not enough," she replied, cracking a smile.

Sam chuckled, and when she smiled even bigger, he asked what was up.

"Nothing. It's just I'm getting better at reading you, apparently. The overwhelming relief at me being okay is really touching considering you've only known me for a few days. How are you two? Did you get everything taken care of at the church?" she asked, sitting up with a slight wince.

"Easy there," Sam said. "And yeah, Dean called just a minute ago to tell me he finished up with the last of the reburials. He's on his way."

"It will be good to see him. I hate to ask, but... how long will you two be sticking around now that the job's over?" her voice was steady, but he could see in her eyes that she was anxious about the answer. "I would imagine there's a lot more places to go, people to save, monsters to gank. Can't waste too much time in one place, right?"

"It's not a waste," Dean said from the doorway. "And we're staying for at least a few days, till you get back on your feet."

"Thanks, Dean," Echo said with a smile.

"Our pleasure. By the way, I think I know how you got possessed from a distance," he said, holding up her anti-possession necklace.

Her hand flew to her throat, feeling the empty space there. "I thought the doctors took it off. Where was it?"

"I found it by the gravemarker you crashed into the first time. Must have gotten broken in the struggle," he explained.

"Ugh," she groaned. "I can't believe that I lost my only protection from possession in only my first ghost fight. Maybe I should get it tattooed on like you two."

"As soon as you're better," Sam promised.

"I believe I can help with that," a voice rumbled from the corner of the room.

The brothers whipped around, Dean with a gun already aimed, and Echo's hand strayed towards where her sword usually rested at her back. The motion pulled at the stitches in her stomach and she winced, hissing in pain. A man was standing by the window, dark-haired, calm expression on his face, and wearing a trenchcoat. Echo heard a fluttering noise and saw a pair of shadowy black feathered wings stretching and then folding up behind his back. This must be Castiel.

"I assume this is your angel buddy?" Echo said with an amount of coolness in her voice that surprised her. She was certainly freaking out on the inside.

"How did you know?" Sam asked, incredulous.

"Well, the giant feathery wings on his back were my first clue," she snarked.

"You can see them?" Dean asked.

"Can't you? They're right there," she said, pointing.

"Sam and Dean are not endowed with the same... gifts as you. You have the ability to see beyond the earthly plane," Castiel explained.

"Huh. So I can see angels, too. Not just ghosts. Do you know what else I can do?" she asked him.

"You are capable of seeing beyond all false forms and vessels," he replied.

"Good to know. Still keeping holy water for weapon purposes," she said. "So, what made you decide to drop in now and not when I was, you know, bleeding to death?"

"Echo," Dean said, with a note of warning.

"What? Angel or not, it's a fair question," she defended herself.

"I was smiting the demon responsible for the cult's power. You would have had more to deal with than your injury if I had let him come close enough to aid his followers," Castiel explained calmly.

"Oh. Sorry. Thank you," Echo mumbled, feeling guilty for trying to make the angel feel bad about not coming when Dean called.

"All is forgiven. I am also sorry that I was unable to help you when you needed it. I have come to... make it up to you, so to speak. I can heal your wound now if you would like," he offered, smiling a little.

"Yes, please," Echo said.

Castiel placed his hand on her brow and she felt a warm and welcoming energy flood her veins. It was like warm honey melting through her and making everything quit hurting. It was... peace. And it felt pretty friggin' awesome. Too soon, probably only a couple of seconds after it began, it was over. Castiel removed his hand and she tentatively touched her stomach. The stitches were there, but nothing hurt. She'd have to cut them out later.

"Thank you," she said.

"You are welcome, Eilonwy. You may call me as absolutely necessary. The Winchesters are my friends and as their sister, you are granted a certain amount of favor," he rumbled.

"Um, thanks? And you can call me Echo," she said awkwardly.

"Farewell then, Echo. And your brothers have taken to calling me Cas. You may as well. Rest, and be safe," he said, and with that, he stretched his enormous black wings and vanished with a soft whoosh of feathers.

"I can't believe I'm getting used to that," Dean muttered. "Come on. We better get you home before a nurse tries to check on the gaping hole in your stomach and finds out that it's gone."

The trip to Echo's home was uneventful. Sam arranged to have her discharged officially while Dean packed her and her few belongings into Baby. His sister stroked her sword when she got it back, which made Dean smile. He never liked to be without his weapons for long either, especially the special ones. The brothers helped her cut out the stitches and got her settled back into her room. Her mom was apparently out at work. Echo said she'd fill her in on the essentials when she got off work. Sam reminded her that she had to take a few days off from work herself to avoid suspicion about the injury, and she sassily replied, "I think I'm entitled to at least a weekend's worth of down time after nearly being killed by demon-enhanced ghosts, so you will get no argument from me. I hear a bad sci-fi movie marathon calling my name."

Sam and Dean stayed for four days, hanging out with their younger sister, getting to know each other. They did some normal stuff, like watching movies. They did some Winchester stuff, like shooting at cans in the backyard and doing Echo's homemade anti-possession tattoo. And they did a weird combination of both: brotherly guidance and sibling bonding in the form of pointers on killing and interrogation techniques for supernatural creatures. Not far into day five, they got a call from Bobby about a critical hunt nearby, something that sounded serious. Dean wasn't sure how to break it to Echo that they needed to leave since she had been enjoying this so much, spending time with her big brothers. It turned out that he didn't have to say anything.

"You guys have to go, huh? Don't feel too bad about it. Knew it was gonna happen eventually. Don't get me wrong, this has been great, but I could tell you two were getting antsy staying in one place for too long, no matter how charming, hilarious, and all-around awesome the company was. I get it. The suburban living, the domestic approach; It's not who you are. You guys, despite how much I have loved spending time with you, are needed elsewhere. So go save the world or whatever already," she said with a sad smile.

"Thanks, Echo. I'll miss you, little sis," Dean replied, hugging her even though that wasn't his normal style because it looked like she needed it.

Sam joined in and the last living members of the Winchester bloodline were all in a group hug. That got awkward fast (they were John's kids, after all), so they broke apart with a symphony of throat clearing and shuffling feet.

Sam and Dean had the Impala packed and ready to go in Echo's driveway. She leaned against the post on the porch, watching them prepare to leave. She stepped forward, pulling something from her pocket and extending it to Dean. It was a small cassette tape simply labeled **Echo's Awesome Mix**.

"It's a mix tape of the best. Kansas, Metallica, Blue Oyster Cult... I figured I better make up for all the missed birthdays where I sort of knew about your existence now before you guys go. I have something for Sam, too," she mumbled, fishing out another item from her pocket and handing it to her younger older brother.

"It's a gift card to Earth Mart," he said. Dean, who had been beaming at his present, glared at Sam, who usually had more tact than him in the social department.

"A _beautiful_ gift card to Earth Mart, thank you very much. I drew a moose on it just for you. I figured it would last longer than a bag of organic apples and since I have no idea if you even like apples, it would be better to get you a gift card to a place that sells them and other healthy junk all over the country," Echo explained. "They have at least a half dozen locations on every state, so you should be able to find one close to wherever you guys go. I noticed you like rabbit food, so this was the best I could come up with after knowing you for like, a week."

"I like it. Thanks, Echo," he said, smiling. She softened, sensing he was genuine. Gift-giving was hard, even for empaths.

"We have surprises for you, too, actually," Dean spoke up.

Dean had written a small handbook on angels because they were absent from their dad's manual. Sam had focused his handbook on investigative and computer hacking skills. Both practical and thoughtful, the gifts made her eyes prick with tears when she realized how much her brothers really cared about her.

"Thank you both. For everything. Thank you so much," she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion.

"You're welcome. You have all of the emergency contact numbers, right?" Dean prompted.

Echo rolled her damp eyes. "I'm not twelve, Dean. But, yes I have the numbers for you and Sam and everyone else there is to contact. And you have mine. We can get ahold of each other if necessary or maybe even just to say hi, like normal people. Wouldn't that be wild?"

"Seriously, call us. We can't guarantee we won't be busy getting punched at the time, but we promise to get back to you, okay? Always," Sam insisted.

"Okay. Just- don't forget about me alright? I'll... miss you guys," she muttered. "I mean, who else am I gonna show up or laugh at for being panicked about swooning women?"

The brothers chuckled and Dean rested a hand on her shoulder. "We'll miss you too... Eilonwy."

"Shut up!" she laughed, punching him in the shoulder.

The boys climbed into the Impala and pulled out, driving towards the highway. Echo watched them from her porch and didn't let the tear fall until they were a speck in the distance. She swiped savagely at her eyes and straightened up. She had a job to do and it sure as heck wasn't shelving books. It was time to accept the burden of the Winchester family. There was a whole lot of weird in the world that needed taking care of and she was beginning to think that even though Dad's heart was in the right place trying to protect her, the promise he'd had her make would be selfish of her to keep when the world was screwed up and she had the power to do something about it.

She said goodbye to her mom and made sure Tess was safe with her aunt before she left. She put in notice with the library and bid farewell to all of her friends in town. The sheriff was surprisingly emotional about it. Then again, he'd been a more constant father figure than John and maybe she teared up a little, too. She even swung by to bid farewell to her Kendo master, who made her promise to keep practicing every day. Her cover story was that she was going to go get her bounty hunter's license, but she was planning on hunting of a different kind. She knew riding away from Fincastle on Bluebird that she was going to miss this place, but she'd be back and there was more than one definition of home.

With her dad's army pack full of supplies and her sword slung across her back and the combined knowledge of three Winchesters and vague hints from the universe on her side (maybe even occasional angel backup), she felt pretty confident that life was about to get a heck of a lot more remarkable.

About freaking time.

A/N: Wow! That chapter really got away from me. Sorry for any excess feels or OOC writing. I just really wanted to close out on a sweet note among the Winchester sibs. Also sorry for the insane amount of time that has passed since I have updated anything at all. I don't know what happened. Oh, yes I do. Advanced Placement classes. Maybe an epilogue to follow. I haven't decided yet. Anyway, thanks so much to my followers for following me. It really brightens my day when I see one of those little alert emails in my inbox that says that another person is enjoying my writing enough to keep up with what I'm doing. Y'all are a blessing for how much you boost my confidence in how I'm doing with my writing. I love you all, my beautiful readers.


	6. Epilogue

Author's Note: Minor spoilers for season 7, set sometime after Dean gets out of Purgatory and before Sam chooses him over Amelia for sure. I apologize in advance for the terrible pun I chose to end with. I feel like a psychic character has a little wiggle room to break the fourth wall.

Epilogue: So This Is How It Ends, Or Perhaps Begins

I stand over the fresh corpse of a dead Leviathan. There are still a few floating around, even after Sam, Dean, and Castiel ended Dick Roman, or rather the thing pretending to be him. If my brothers hadn't warned me about those jerks and the corn syrup plan, I would have probably ended up one of those stoned cattle that got eaten by monsters. I like my blue raspberry slushies, after all. Calmly, I pour a little more borax solution over the body and wrinkle my nose as it convulses for a second. Super creepy. I have just finished burning the body and head and am about to put the ashes in separate boxes to be stored in different countries when my phone rings, blaring out "Carry On My Wayward Son." Dean's ringtone. I smile and at least take the time to scrape the head's ashes into the locked safe box before picking up, keeping one eye on the remains.

"Hello, this is the hottest Winchester speaking. How can I help you?" I greet him.

"Very funny. And we both know that the real stud is me, but you come before Sam, for sure. His hair is even longer than the last time you saw him," Dean rumbles.

"Seriously? How do people keep believing that that mane of his is within FBI regulation length? I swear, your fake badges must be _perfect_ if he's still fooling people," I laugh.

"Nothing but the best forgeries for America's favorite twice-dead psychopaths," my brother snarks, referring to the Leviathan duplicates serial killer incident. I know it affects him more than he lets on that for a while he was seen as a pretty heinous bad guy. He needs to think of himself as a hero to keep getting out of bed in the morning. I quickly change the subject.

"So, what's up? I assume that this isn't a social call?" I prompt him.

"Yeah. I know I protested pretty loudly when I heard you were on the job, but lately I've been hearing about how well you've been handling yourself. There's rumors flying about new talent on the scene and Echo Henry is quickly becoming a kind of folk hero. Good move on the fake name, by the way. It makes you less of a target. Good job on the net you took out in Topeka, by the way. I heard you rigged up UV lamps and turned them on to blind the vamps once you were surrounded," he compliments me.

"I'm so glad you finally approve, big brother. And thanks. So, what, did you just call to congratulate me?" I ask.

"Actually... I think we need your help. There's a hunt here that really requires a girl who knows what she's doing, and so, naturally I thought of you first. Can you come?" Dean requests.

"Flattery will get you everywhere. Where are you?" I inquire.

"Peru," he replies. After a moment of my startled silence, he clarifies, "The city in Indiana. Twin Pines Motel."

"I'll be there in three hours," I promise. "And Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Give Sam a hug from me and I order both of you not to be so hard on yourselves. Also, if you two are still fighting, make up by the time I get there because I am not dealing with your angsty testosterone-fueled squabbling. You were probably both at least partially responsible for whatever it is, so get over it. Am I clear?" I prod.

"Yes, ma'am," he chuckles. "How do you always know?"

"Psychic sister mojo strikes again. You're lucky to have me because no therapist would put up with you two," I reply.

"Why do you?" he asks.

"I'm just playing it safe until my application for sainthood goes through. I figure it gets me extra brownie points," I joke.

"Echo?" Dean chuckles.

"What?" I huff.

"Never change," he says with a smile in his voice.

We say goodbye and hang up. I finish disposing of the Leviathan and ship the secure packages. Then I'm on Bluebird, roaring down the highway. I let off a laugh as I hit the turnpike as I wonder how I got so lucky in the sibling department. It's uncanny how well we work as a team, how well we mesh and get along. You could almost say it's...

Supernatural.


End file.
